STEPPING STONES 06/12/16 By BOMANI ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY Research & Development (BATRD)

Volume 2, Issue 23, June 12, 2016

In this issue...

Public Service Announcements

Quote Of The Week: Zora Neale Hurston

Book Of The Month: “Seize The Time: The true story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton” by Bobby Seale

It’s YOUR Health: Bioterroism

Historical Fact Of The Week: African Americans: Part XXXIV

Editorial Commentary: Coming!   

 

Public Service Announcements

• The rechartering for The Head Cornerstone Corporation in the State Of Delaware as well as all updated business licenses and associated issues are forth coming pending litigation. Thank you.
• Visit WWW.Ready.gov at your earliest convenience so that you may be informed of basic protective measures before, during, and after disasters/emergencies, learn disaster prepared activities, training, plans, and what shelters are in or near your community, develop an emergency plan for yourself and your family in the event of an actual disaster/emergency, build an disaster/emergency supply kit including a basic emergency medical/trauma bag in case of an event, and GET INVOLVED!
• Get your CPR (Cardio-Pulomonary Resuscitation) and Basic First Aid/First Responder/Basic Life Support including child birth and Emergency Pediatric Care training today. Check with the American Heart Association at WWW.Heart.org for locations. It may just save a life.
•  It’s a lot of fun and excitement, it’s healthy, it’s a great family activity, and it’s very practical. Find a course in self defense for you and your loved ones and learn to protect yourselves. You just never know.
•  We have the constitutional right to BEAR ARMS and many states have the CCW (Conceal Carry Weapon) License for when you and your loved ones are outside of your home environment. Search the web for free information concerning the Conceal Carry Laws as well as other valuable information. Get the CCW License today (where applicable) for you and your family members of age and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT. You’ll feel better that you did.
•  WATER; it’s very essential for normal body functions and not only carries nutrients to your cells, but flushes out the toxins in are bodies that lead to diseases such as cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. According to the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Health, water consumption varies for each person depending on many factors associated with life styles, such as current health, activities, and where you live. Be informed about what your daily intake should be and “drink up”. It will make YOUR world a better place.

Public Service Announcements

are brought to you by

COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL

 

“SOUTHERN FUNK”: A new music genre sub-group consisting of very well blended and varying combinations of Classical, Traditional, Contemporary, and Acid Jazz, Memphis and Deep Soul, Southern Gospel/Spiritual, Acoustic, House, Ambient, Delta Blues, and Funk with the distinctive bass on the 3rd chord. Created during the early 2000’s at Muddy Waters studio in Memphis, Tenn. by George. Have a taste at

Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

and pick up the debut single,

“I Want To Know”

from

“Volume I George”

when it drops!

“Taste my funk (smile).”

George

Follow George on Twitter:

George

@George_StoneRec

"Strictly business for serious business minds…".

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.”

Zora Neale Hurston

January 7, 1891- January 28, 1960

An African American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In addition to new editions of her work being published after a revival of interest in her in 1975, her manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives.

Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston (née Potts). Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter, and her mother was a school teacher. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7, 1891, where her father grew up and her grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church.

When she was three, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida; in 1887 it was one of the first all-African American towns to be incorporated in the United States. Hurston said she always felt that Eatonville was "home" to her as she grew up there, and sometimes she claimed it as her birthplace. Her father later was elected as mayor of the town in 1897 and in 1902 became preacher of its largest church, Macedonia Missionary Baptist.

Hurston later used Eatonville as a backdrop in her stories. It was a place where African Americans could live as they desired, independent of Caucasian American society. In 1901, some northern schoolteachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston a number of books that opened her mind to literature; she described it as a kind of "birth". Hurston spent the remainder of her childhood in Eatonville, and describes the experience of growing up there in her 1928 essay, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me".

In 1904, Hurston's mother died. Her father remarried to Matte Moge; this was considered a minor scandal, as it was rumored that he had relations with Moge before his first wife's death. Hurston's father and stepmother sent her away to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. They eventually stopped paying her tuition and the school expelled her. She later worked as a maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company.

In 1917, Hurston began attending Morgan College, the high school division of Morgan State University, a historically African American college in Baltimore, Maryland. At this time, apparently to qualify for a free high-school education (as well, perhaps to reflect her literary birth), the 26-year-old Hurston began claiming 1901 as her year of birth. She graduated from the high school of Morgan State University in 1918.

Also, in 1918, Hurston began studies at Howard University, where she became one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and co-founded The Hilltop, the university's student newspaper. While there, she took courses in Spanish, English, Greek and public speaking and earned an associate degree in 1920. In 1921, she wrote a short story, John Redding Goes to Sea, which qualified her to become a member of Alaine Locke's literary club, The Stylus. Hurston left Howard in 1924 and in 1925 was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was the college's sole African American student. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in 1928, when she was 37. While she was at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research with noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University.

In 1927, Hurston married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and a former classmate at Howard who later became a physician. Their marriage ended in 1931. In 1939, while Hurston was working for the WPA, she married Albert Price. The marriage ended after seven months.

She lived in a cottage in Eau Gallie, Florida, twice: once in 1929 and again in 1951. During the 1930s, Hurston was a resident of Westfield, New Jersey, where Langston Hughes was among her neighbors. In 1934 she established a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman University (at the time, Bethune-Cookman College), a historically African American college in Daytona Beach, Florida.

In later life, in addition to continuing her literary career, Hurston served on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in Durham, North Carolina.

In 1956 Hurston received the Bethune-Cookman College Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her achievements. The English Department at Bethune-Cookman College remains dedicated to preserving her cultural legacy.

Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. Based on her work in the South, sponsored from 1928 to 1932 by Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy philanthropist, Hurston wrote Mules and Men in 1935. She was doing research in lumber camps and commented on the practice of Caucasian American men in power taking African American women as sexual concubines, including having them bear children. This later was referred to as "paramour rights," based in the men's power under racial and related to practices during slavery times. The book also includes much folklore. She used this material as well in fictional treatment developed for her novels such as Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934).

In 1936 and 1937, Hurston traveled to Jamaica and Haiti for research, with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. She drew from this for her anthropological work, Tell My Horse (1938).

From October 1947 to February 1948, she lived in Honduras, at the north coastal town of Puerto Cortés. She had some hopes of locating either Mayan ruins or vestiges of an as yet undiscovered civilization. While in Puerto Cortés, she wrote much of Seraph on the Suwanee, set in Florida. Hurston expressed interest in the polyethnic nature of the population in the region (many, such as the Miskito Zambu and Garifuna, were of partial African ancestry and had developed creole cultures).

In 1948, Hurston was falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy. Although the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that she was in Honduras when the crime supposedly occurred in the U.S., her personal life was seriously disrupted by the scandal.

During her last decade, Hurston worked as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. In the fall of 1952 she was contacted by Sam Nunn, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, to go to Florida to cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum. McCollum was charged with murdering a Caucasian American doctor and politician, who McCollum said had forced her to have sex and bear his child. Hurston recalled what she had seen of Caucasian American male sexual dominance in the lumber camps in North Florida, and discussed it with Nunn. They both thought the case might be about such "paramour rights," and wanted to "expose it to a national audience."

Upon reaching Live Oak, Hurston was surprised not only by the gag order the judge in the trial placed on the defense, but by her inability to get residents in town to talk about the case; both African and Caucasian Americans were silent. She believed that might have been related to Dr. Adams' alleged involvement as well in Sam McCollum's gambling operation. Her articles were published by the newspaper during the trial. Ruby McCollum was convicted by an all-Caucasian American, all-male jury, and sentenced to death. Hurston had a special assignment to write a serialized account, The Life Story of Ruby McCollum, over three months in 1953 in the newspaper. Her part was ended abruptly when she and Nunn disagreed about her pay, and she left.

Unable to pay independently to return for the appeal and second trial, she contacted journalist William Bradford Huie, with whom she had worked at The American Mercury, to try to interest him in the case. He covered the appeal and second trial, and also developed material from a background investigation. Hurston shared her material with him from the first trial, but he acknowledged her only briefly in his book, Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), which became a bestseller. Hurston celebrated that

"McCollum’s testimony in her own defense marked the first time that a woman of African-American descent was allowed to testify as to the paternity of her child by a white man.”

Hurston firmly believed that Ruby McCollum’s testimony sounded the death toll of 'paramour rights' in the Segregationist South.

Among other positions, Hurston later worked at the Pan American World Airways Technical Library at Patrick Air Force Base in 1957. She was fired for being "too well-educated" for her job.

She moved to Fort Pierce. Taking jobs where she could find them, she worked as a substitute teacher and as a maid.

During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke. She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973. Novelist Alice Walker and literary scholar Charlotte Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried, and decided to mark it as hers.

After Hurston died her papers were ordered to be burned. A law officer and friend, Patrick DuVal, passing by the house where she had lived, stopped and put out the fire, thus saving an invaluable collection of literary documents for posterity. The nucleus of this collection was given to the University of Florida libraries in 1961 by Mrs. Marjorie Silver, friend and neighbor of Hurston. Other materials were donated in 1970 and 1971 by Frances Grover, daughter of E. O. Grover, a Rollins College professor and long-time friend of Hurston's. In 1979 Stetson Kennedy of Jacksonville, who knew Hurston through his work with the Federal Writers Project, added additional papers. [(Zora Neale Hurston Papers, University of Florida Smathers Libraries, August 2008)]

When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its peak, and she soon became one of the writers at its center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston's short story “Spunk” was selected for The New Negro, a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays focusing on African and African American art and literature. In 1926, a group of young African American writers including Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called Fire!! that featured many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1929, Hurston moved to Eau Gallie in Florida where she wrote Mules and Men, which was later published in 1935.

By the mid-1930s, Hurston had published several short stories and the critically acclaimed Mules and Men (1935), a groundbreaking work of "literary anthropology" documenting African American folklore from timber camps in North Florida. In 1930, she collaborated with Langston Hughes on Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts, a play that they never staged. It was published posthumously in 1991.

Hurston translated her anthropological work into the performing arts, and her folk revue, The Great Day, which featured authentic African song and dance, premiered at the John Golden Theatre in New York in January 1932. There was only one performance of The Great Day, despite the positive reviews. The Broadway debut left Hurston in $600 worth of debt. No producers wanted to move forward with a full run of the show.

During the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston produced two other musical revues, From Sun to Sun, which was a revised adaptation of The Great Day, and Singing Steel. Hurston had a strong belief that folk should be dramatized.

Hurston's first three novels were published in the 1930s: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), written during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939).

In 1937, Hurston was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti.

In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as The American Mercury and The Saturday Evening Post. Her last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, notable principally for its focus on Caucasian American characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of "white trash" women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor Caucasian Americans reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s.

In 1952, Hurston was assigned by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous African American wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist Caucasian American doctor. She also contributed to Woman in the Suwannee County Jail, a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie. In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from this work for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing.

Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.

Many readers objected to the representation of African American dialect in Hurston's novels, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Her stylistic choices in terms of dialogue were influenced by her academic experiences. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period which she documented through ethnographic research. For example, a character in Jonah's Gourd Vine expresses herself in this manner:

"Dat's a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin' dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah'll wash yo' tub uh 'gator guts and dat quick."

Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized Hurston's use of dialect as a caricature of African American culture rooted in a racist tradition. In particular, a number of writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance were critical of Hurston's later writings, on the basis that they did not agree with or further the position of the overall movement. One particular criticism came from Richard Wright in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God:

“... The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy. She exploits that phase of Negro life which is "quaint," the phase which evokes a piteous smile on the lips of the "superior" race.

More recently, many critics have praised Hurston's skillful use of idiomatic speech.

During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the pre-eminent African American author was Richard Wright. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, as someone who had become disenchanted with communism, using the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright. Hurston's work, which did not engage these political issues, did not fit in with this struggle. In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government, and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians.

Author Alice Walker sought Hurston's grave in 1973 and planted a grave marker calling her "A Genius of the South." Walker then published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, reviving interest in Hurston's work. The renewal of attention to Hurston was related also to the rise of new African American authors such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Walker, whose works are centered on African American experiences and include, but do not necessarily focus upon, racial struggle.

Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, celebrates her life in an annual festival and is home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts, named in her honor. Her life and legacy are celebrated every year here at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.

Hurston's house in Fort Pierce has been designated a National Historic Landmark. The city celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties, and a several-day festival at the end of April known as Zora Fest.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Barnard College dedicated its 2003 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference to Hurston. "Jumpin’ at the Sun: Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston" focused on her work and influence. Alice Walker's Gildersleeve lecture detailed her work on discovering and publicizing Hurston's legacy.

She was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010.

On January 7, 2014, the 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle.

She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.

John McWhorter has called Hurston "America's favorite black conservative" while David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito have argued that she can better be characterized as a "libertarian." She was a Republican who was generally sympathetic to the foreign policy non-interventionism of the Old Right and a fan of Booker T. Washington's self-help politics. She disagreed with the philosophies

(including Communism and the New Deal) supported by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who was in the 1930s a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in several of his poems. Despite much common ground with the Old Right in domestic and foreign policy, Hurston was not a social conservative. Her writings show an affinity for feminist individualism. In this respect, her views were similar to two libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries: Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson. Although her personal quotes show a disbelief of religion, Hurston did not negate spiritual matters as evidenced from her 1942 autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road.

“Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. The ever-sleepless sea in its bed, crying out “how long?” to Time; million-formed and never motionless flame; the contemplation of these two aspects alone, affords me sufficient food for ten spans of my expected lifetime. It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.”

In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to Roosevelt and Truman's interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston compared the United States government to a "fence" in stolen goods and to a Mafia-like protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same

“people who claim that it is a noble thing to die for freedom and democracy ... wax frothy if anyone points out the inconsistency of their morals.... We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own.”

She was scathing about those who sought "freedoms" for those abroad but denied it to people in their home countries: Roosevelt "can call names across an ocean" for his Four Freedoms, but he did not have “the courage to speak even softly at home.” When Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan she called him “the Butcher of Asia.”

Hurston opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954. She felt that if separate schools were truly equal (and she believed that they were rapidly becoming so), educating African American students in physical proximity to Caucasian American students would not result in better education. In addition, she worried about the demise of African American schools and African American teachers as a way to pass on cultural tradition to future generations of African Americans. She voiced this opposition in a letter, "Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix", that was published in the Orlando Sentinel in August 1955. Hurston had not reversed her long-time opposition to segregation. Rather, she feared that the Court's ruling could become a precedent for an all-powerful federal government to undermine individual liberty on a broad range of issues in the future. Hurston also opposed preferential treatment for African Americans, saying:

“If I say a whole system must be upset for me to win, I am saying that I cannot sit in the game, and that safer rules must be made to give me a chance. I repudiate that. If others are in there, deal me a hand and let me see what I can make of it, even though I know some in there are dealing from the bottom and cheating like hell in other ways.”

Darwin Turner, one of Hurston's biographers, faulted her for racism for opposing integration, and for opposing programs to guarantee African Americans the right to work.

Other authors criticized Hurston for her sensationalist representation of voodoo. In The Crisis, Harold Preece criticized Hurston for her perpetuation of "Negro primitivism" in order to advance her own literary career. The Journal of Negro History complained that her work on voodoo was an indictment of African American ignorance and superstition.

Jeffrey Anderson states that Hurston's research methods were questionable, and that she fabricated material for her works on voodoo. He observed that she admitted inventing dialogue for her book Mules and Men in a letter to Ruth Benedict. She described fabricating the Mules and Men story of rival voodoo doctors as a child in her later autobiography. Anderson observes that many of Hurston's other claims in her voodoo writings are dubious as well.

Several authors have observed that Hurston engaged in significant plagiarism in at least three works according to their account. Her article "Cudjo's own story of the last African slaver" was only 25% original, the rest being plagiarized.

Selected bibliography

"Journey's End" (Negro World, 1922), poetry

"Night" (Negro World, 1922), poetry

"Passion" (Negro World, 1922), poetry

Color Struck (Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, 1925), play

"Sweat" (1926), short story

"How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928), essay

"Hoodoo in America" (1931) in The Journal of American Folklore

"The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933), short story

Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), novel

Mules and Men (1935), non-fiction

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), novel

Tell My Horse (1938), non-fiction

Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), novel

Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), autobiography

Seraph on the Suwanee (1948), novel

"What White Publishers Won't Print" (Negro Digest, 1950)

I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (Alice Walker, ed.) (1979)

The Sanctified Church (1981)

Spunk: Selected Stories (1985)

Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (play, with Langston Hughes; edited with introductions by George Houston Bass and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) (1991)

The Complete Stories (introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke) (1995)

Novels & Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, Selected Stories (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.) (Library of America, 1995) ISBN 978-0-940450-83-7

Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.) (Library of America, 1995) ISBN 978-0-940450-84-4

Barracoon (1999)

Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States (2001)

Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, collected and edited by Carla Kaplan (2003)

Collected Plays (2008)

Film and television

In 1989 PBS aired a drama based on Hurston's life entitled Zora is My Name!

The 2004 film Brother to Brother, set in part during the Harlem Renaissance, featured Hurston (portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis).

Their Eyes Were Watching God was adapted for a 2005 film of the same title by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, with a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks. The film starred Halle Berry as Janie Starks.

On April 9, 2008, PBS broadcast a 90-minute documentary, Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun, written and produced by filmmaker Kristy Andersen, as part of the American Masters series.

In 2009, Hurston was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project titled Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, which premiered on the Smithsonian Channel. Her work in Florida during the 1930s is highlighted in the companion book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America.

See also

Portal icon African American portal

Portal icon Conservatism portal

Portal icon Biography portal

African American literature

Ruby McCollum

Kevin Brown (author)

zoranealehurston.com

 

BOOK Of THE MONTH

“Seize The Time: The true story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton”

By Bobby Seale

ISBN-10: 093312130X

ISBN-13: 978-0933121300

 

IT’S YOUR HEALTH

Bioterrorism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form. For the use of this method in warfare, see biological warfare.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a bioterrorism attack is the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, toxins or other harmful agents used to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plants. These agents are typically found in nature, but it is possible that they could be mutated or altered to increase their ability to cause disease, make them resistant to current medicines, or to increase their ability to be spread into the environment. Biological agents can be spread through the air, water, or in food. Terrorists tend to use biological agents because they are extremely difficult to detect and do not cause illness for several hours to several days. Some bioterrorism agents, like the smallpox virus, can be spread from person to person and some, like anthrax, cannot.

Bioterrorism is an attractive weapon because biological agents are relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, can be easily disseminated, and can cause widespread fear and panic beyond the actual physical damage they can cause. Military leaders, however, have learned that, as a military asset, bioterrorism has some important limitations; it is difficult to employ a bioweapon in a way that only the enemy is affected and not friendly forces. A biological weapon is useful to terrorists mainly as a method of creating mass panic and disruption to a state or a country. However, technologists such as Bill Joy have warned of the potential power which genetic engineering might place in the hands of future bio-terrorists.

The use of agents that do not cause harm to humans but disrupt the economy have been discussed. A highly relevant pathogen in this context is the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus, which is capable of causing widespread economic damage and public concern (as witnessed in the 2001 and 2007 FMD outbreaks in the UK), whilst having almost no capacity to infect humans.

History

20th century

By the time World War I began, attempts to use anthrax were directed at animal populations. This generally proved to be ineffective. Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France. At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules. Dilger set up a laboratory in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He used stevedores working the docks in Baltimore to infect horses with glanders while they were waiting to be shipped to Britain. Dilger was under suspicion as being a German agent, but was never arrested. Dilger eventually fled to Madrid, Spain, where he died during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. In 1916, the Russians arrested a German agent with similar intentions. Germany and its allies infected French cavalry horses and many of Russia’s mules and horses on the Eastern Front. These actions hindered artillery and troop movements, as well as supply convoys.

In 1972 police in Chicago arrested two college students, Allen Schwander and Stephen Pera, who had planned to poison the city's water supply with typhoid and other bacteria. Schwander had founded a terrorist group, "R.I.S.E.", while Pera collected and grew cultures from the hospital where he worked. The two men fled to Cuba after being released on bail. Schwander died of natural causes in 1974, while Pera returned to the U.S. in 1975 and was put on probation.

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack: In Oregon in 1984, followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh attempted to control a local election by incapacitating the local population. This was done by infecting salad bars in 11 restaurants, produce in grocery stores, doorknobs, and other public domains with Salmonella typhimurium bacteria in the city of The Dalles, Oregon. The attack infected 751 people with severe food poisoning. There were no fatalities. This incident was the first known bioterrorist attack in the United States in the 20th century.

Aum Shinrikyo anthrax release in Kameido : In June 1993 the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released anthrax in Tokyo. Eyewitnesses reported a foul odor. The attack was a total failure, infecting not a single person. The reason for this, ironically, is that the group used the vaccine strain of the bacterium. The spores recovered from the attack showed that they were identical to an anthrax vaccine strain given to animals at the time. These vaccine strains are missing the genes that cause a symptomatic response.

21st century

2001 - USA and Chile - Anthrax Attacks: In September and October 2001, several cases of anthrax broke out in the United States in the 2001 anthrax attacks, apparently caused deliberately. Letters laced with infectious anthrax were concurrently delivered to news media offices and the U.S Congress, alongside an ambiguously related case in Chile. The letters killed 5.CNN

Types of agents

Under current United States law, bio-agents which have been declared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have the "potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety" are officially defined as "select agents". The CDC categorizes these agents (A, B or C) and administers the Select Agent Program, which regulates the laboratories which may possess, use, or transfer select agents within the United States. As with US attempts to categorize harmful recreational drugs, designer viruses are not yet categorized and avian H5N1 has been shown to achieve high mortality and human-communication in a laboratory setting.

Category A

These high-priority agents pose a risk to national security, can be easily transmitted and disseminated, result in high mortality, have potential major public health impact, may cause public panic, or require special action for public health preparedness.

Tularemia

Tularemia, or rabbit fever, has a very low fatality rate if treated, but can severely incapacitate. The disease is caused by the Francisella tularensis bacterium, and can be contracted through contact with the fur, inhalation, ingestion of contaminated water or insect bites. Francisella tularensis is very infectious. A small number (10–50 or so organisms) can cause disease. If F. tularensis were used as a weapon, the bacteria would likely be made airborne for exposure by inhalation. People who inhale an infectious aerosol would generally experience severe respiratory illness, including life-threatening pneumonia and systemic infection, if they are not treated. The bacteria that cause tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication.

Anthrax

Anthrax is a non-contagious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. An anthrax vaccine does exist but requires many injections for stable use. When discovered early anthrax can be cured by administering antibiotics (such as ciprofloxacin). Its first modern incidence in biological warfare were when Scandinavian "freedom fighters" supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916. In 1993, the Aum Shinrikyo used anthrax in an unsuccessful attempt in Tokyo with zero fatalities. Anthrax was used in a series of attacks on the offices of several United States Senators in late 2001. The anthrax was in a powder form and it was delivered by the mail. Anthrax is one of the few biological agents that federal employees have been vaccinated for. The strain used in the 2001 anthrax attack was identical to the strain used by the USAMRIID.

Smallpox

Smallpox is a highly contagious virus. It is transmitted easily through the atmosphere and has a high mortality rate (20–40%). Smallpox was eradicated in the world in the 1970s, thanks to a worldwide vaccination program. However, some virus samples are still available in Russian and American laboratories. Some believe that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cultures of smallpox have become available in other countries. Although people born pre-1970 will have been vaccinated for smallpox under the WHO program, the effectiveness of vaccination is limited since the vaccine provides high level of immunity for only 3 to 5 years. Revaccination's protection lasts longer. As a biological weapon smallpox is dangerous because of the highly contagious nature of both the infected and their pox. Also, the infrequency with which vaccines are administered among the general population since the eradication of the disease would leave most people unprotected in the event of an outbreak. Smallpox occurs only in humans, and has no external hosts or vectors.

Botulinum toxin

The neurotoxin Botulinum is one of the deadliest toxins known, and is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Botulism causes death by respiratory failure and paralysis. Furthermore, the toxin is readily available worldwide due to its cosmetic applications in injections.

Bubonic plague

Plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Rodents are the normal host of plague, and the disease is transmitted to humans by flea bites and occasionally by aerosol in the form of pneumonic plague. The disease has a history of use in biological warfare dating back many centuries, and is considered a threat due to its ease of culture and ability to remain in circulation among local rodents for a long period of time. The weaponized threat comes mainly in the form of pneumonic plague (infection by inhalation) It was the disease that caused the Black Death in Medieval Europe.

Viral hemorrhagic fevers

This includes hemorrhagic fevers caused by members of the family Filoviridae (Marburg virus and Ebola virus), and by the family Arenaviridae (for example Lassa virus and Machupo virus). Ebola virus disease has fatality rates ranging from 50–90%. No cure currently exists, although vaccines are in development. The Soviet Union investigated the use of filoviruses for biological warfare, and the Aum Shinrikyo group unsuccessfully attempted to obtain cultures of Ebola virus.[citation needed] Death from Ebola virus disease is commonly due to multiple organ failure and hypovolemic shock. Marburg virus was first discovered in Marburg, Germany. No treatments currently exist aside from supportive care. The arenaviruses have a somewhat reduced case-fatality rate compared to disease caused by filoviruses, but are more widely distributed, chiefly in central Africa and South America.

Category B

Category B agents are moderately easy to disseminate and have low mortality rates.

• Brucellosis (Brucella species)
• Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens
• Food safety threats (for example, Salmonella species, E coli O157:H7, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus)
• Glanders[26] (Burkholderia mallei)
• Melioidosis (Burkholderia pseudomallei)
• Psittacosis (Chlamydia psittaci)
• Q fever (Coxiella burnetii)
• Ricin[30] toxin from Ricinus communis (castor beans)
• Abrin toxin from Abrus precatorius (Rosary peas)
• Staphylococcal enterotoxin B
• Typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii)
• Viral encephalitis (alphaviruses, for example,: Venezuelan equine encephalitis, eastern equine encephalitis, western equine encephalitis)
• Water supply threats (for example, Vibrio cholerae, Cryptosporidium parvum)

Category C

Category C agents are emerging pathogens that might be engineered for mass dissemination because of their availability, ease of production and dissemination, high mortality rate, or ability to cause a major health impact.

• Nipah virus
• Hantavirus
• SARS
• H1N1 a strain of influenza (flu)
• HIV/AIDS

(Continued)

 

HISTORICAL FACT OF THE WEEK

AFRICAN AMERICANS

“A People Of The Many Descendants Of Afrika”

Part XXXIV

Post Civil Rights Era XII

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music, or hip-hop music, is a music genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. It developed as part of hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching, break dancing, and graffiti writing. Other elements include sampling (or synthesis), and beatboxing.

While often used to refer to rapping, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of hip hop culture, including DJing and scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

The creation of the term hip hop is often credited to Keith Cowboy, rapper with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. However, Lovebug Starski, Keith Cowboy, and DJ Hollywood used the term when the music was still known as disco rap. It is believed that Cowboy created the term while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words "hip/hop/hip/hop" in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the "hip hop" cadence into a part of his stage performance, which was quickly used by other artists such as The Sugarhill Gang in "Rapper's Delight".

Universal Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa is credited with first using the term to describe the subculture in which the music belonged; although it is also suggested that it was a derogatory term to describe the type of music. The first use of the term in print was in The Village Voice, by Steven Hager, later author of a 1984 history of hip hop.

1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the Bronx, is a venue used by Kool Herc that is often considered the birthplace of hip hop. DJ Kool Herc is recognized as one of the earliest hip hop artists. Hip hop as music and culture formed during the 1970s when block parties became increasingly popular in New York City, particularly among African American youth residing in the Bronx. Block parties incorporated DJs who played popular genres of music, especially funk and soul music. Due to the positive reception, DJs began isolating the percussive breaks of popular songs. This technique was then common in Jamaican dub music, and was largely introduced into New York by immigrants from Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, including DJ Kool Herc, who is generally considered the father of hip hop. Because the percussive breaks in funk, soul and disco records were generally short, Herc and other DJs began using two turntables to extend the breaks.

Turntablist techniques – such as scratching (attributed to Grand Wizzard Theodore), beat mixing and/or matching, and beat juggling – eventually developed along with the breaks, creating a base that could be rapped over, in a manner similar to signifying, as well as the art of toasting, another influence found in Jamaican dub music.

Hip hop music in its infancy has been described as an outlet and a "voice" for the disenfranchised youth of low-economic areas, as the culture reflected the social, economic and political realities of their lives.

Rapping, also referred to as MCing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the artist speaks lyrically, in rhyme and verse, generally to an instrumental or synthesized beat. Beats, almost always in 4/4 time signature, can be created by sampling and/or sequencing portions of other songs by a producer. They also incorporate synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands. Rappers may write, memorize, or improvise their lyrics and perform their works a cappella or to a beat.

Hip hop music predates the introduction of rapping into hip hop culture, and rap vocals are absent from many hip hop tracks, such as "Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop)" by Man Parrish; "Chinese Arithmetic" by Eric B. & Rakim; "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)" and "We're Rocking the Planet" by Hashim; and "Destination Earth" by Newcleus. However, the majority of the genre has been accompanied by rap vocals, including female rappers. Bronx artist MC Sha Rock, member of the Funky Four Plus One is credited with performing the first female hip hop rap. The Sequence, a hip hop trio signed to Sugar Hill Records in the early '80's, were the first all female group to release a rap record, Funk You Up.

The roots of rapping are found in African American music and ultimately African music, particularly that of the griots of West African culture. The African American traditions of signifyin', the dozens, and jazz poetry all influence hip hop music, as well as the call and response patterns of African and African American religious ceremonies. Soul singer James Brown, and musical 'comedy' acts such as Rudy Ray Moore and Blowfly are often considered "godfathers" of hip hop music.

Within New York City, performances of spoken-word poetry and music by artists such as The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin had a significant impact on the post-civil rights era culture of the 1960s and 1970s, and thus the social environment in which hip hop music was created.

DJ Kool Herc and Coke La Rock provided an influence on the vocal style of rapping by delivering simple poetry verses over funk music breaks, after party-goers showed little interest in their previous attempts to integrate reggae-infused toasting into musical sets. DJs and MCs would often add call and response chants, often consisting of a basic chorus, to allow the performer to gather his thoughts (e.g. "one, two, three, y'all, to the beat").

Later, the MCs grew more varied in their vocal and rhythmic delivery, incorporating brief rhymes, often with a sexual or scatological theme, in an effort to differentiate themselves and to entertain the audience. These early raps incorporated the dozens, a product of African American culture. Kool Herc & the Herculoids were the first hip hop group to gain recognition in New York, but the number of MC teams increased over time.

Often these were collaborations between former gangs, such as Afrikaa Bambaataa's Universal Zulu Nation—now an international organization. Melle Mel, a rapper with The Furious Five is often credited with being the first rap lyricist to call himself an "MC". During the early 1970s B-boying arose during block parties, as b-boys and b-girls got in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive and frenetic style. The style was documented for release to a world wide audience for the first time in documentaries and movies such as Style Wars, Wild Style, and Beat Street. The term "B-boy" was coined by DJ Kool Herc to describe the people who would wait for the break section of the song, getting in front of the audience to dance in a distinctive, frenetic style.

Although there were many early MCs that recorded solo projects of note, such as DJ Hollywood, Kurtis Blow and Spoonie Gee, the frequency of solo artists did not increase until later with the rise of soloists with stage presence and drama, such as LL Cool J. Most early hip hop was dominated by groups where collaboration between the members was integral to the show. An example would be the early hip hop group Funky Four Plus One, who performed in such a manner on Saturday Night Live in 1981.

Hip hop music was both influenced by disco music and a backlash against it. According to Kurtis Blow, the early days of hip hop were characterized by divisions between fans and detractors of disco music. Hip hop had largely emerged as "a direct response to the watered down, Europeanised, disco music that permeated the airwaves", and the earliest hip hop was mainly based on hard funk loops. However, by 1979, disco instrumental loops/tracks had become the basis of much hip hop music. This genre got the name of "disco rap". Ironically, hip hop music was also a proponent in the eventual decline in disco popularity.

DJ Pete Jones, Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood, and Love Bug Starski were disco-influenced hip hop DJs. Their styles differed from other hip hop musicians who focused on rapid-fire rhymes and more complex rhythmic schemes. Afrika Bambaataa, Paul Winley, Grandmaster Flash, and Bobby Robinson were all members of this latter group.

In Washington, D.C. go-go emerged as a reaction against disco and eventually incorporated characteristics of hip hop during the early 1980s. The genre of electronic music behaved similarly, eventually evolving into what is known as house music in Chicago and techno in Detroit.

Prior to 1979, recorded hip hop music consisted mainly of PA system recordings of parties and early hip hop mixtapes by DJs. Puerto Rican DJ Disco Wiz is credited as the first hip hop DJ to create a "mixed plate," or mixed dub recording, when, in 1977, he combined sound bites, special effects and paused beats to technically produce a sound recording.

The first hip hop record is widely regarded to be The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", from 1979. However, much controversy surrounds this assertion as some regard "King Tim III (Personality Jock)" by The Fatback Band, which was released a few weeks before "Rapper's Delight", as a rap record. There are various other claimants for the title of first hip hop record.

By the early 1980s, all the major elements and techniques of the hip hop genre were in place. Though not yet mainstream, hip hop had permeated outside of New York City; it could be found in cities as diverse as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, San Antonio, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, New Orleans, Houston, and Toronto. Indeed, "Funk You Up" (1979), the first hip hop record released by a female group, and the second single released by Sugar Hill Records, was performed by The Sequence, a group from Columbia, South Carolina which featured Angie Stone.

Despite the genre's growing popularity, Philadelphia was, for many years, the only city whose contributions could be compared to New York City's. Hip hop music became popular in Philadelphia in the late 1970s. The first released record was titled "Rhythm Talk", by Jocko Henderson.

The New York Times had dubbed Philadelphia the "Graffiti Capital of the World" in 1971. Philadelphia native DJ Lady B recorded "To the Beat Y'All" in 1979, and became the first female solo hip hop artist to record music. Schoolly D, starting in 1984 and also from Philadelphia, began creating a style that would later be known as gangsta rap.

The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop as the genre developed more complex styles. Early examples of the diversification process can be identified through such tracks as Grandmaster Flash's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (1981), a single consisting entirely of sampled tracks as well as Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" (1982), which signified the fusion of hip hop music with electro. In addition, Rammellzee & K-Rob's "Beat Bop" (1983) was a 'slow jam' which had a dub influence with its use of reverb and echo as texture and playful sound effects. The mid-1980s was marked by the influence of rock music, with the release of such albums as King of Rock and Licensed to Ill.

Heavy usage of the new generation of drum machines such as the Oberheim DMX and Roland 808 models was a characteristic of many 1980s songs. To this day the 808 kickdrum is traditionally used by hip hop producers. Over time sampling technology became more advanced; however earlier producers such as Marley Marl used drum machines to construct their beats from small excerpts of other beats in synchronisation, in his case, triggering 3 Korg sampling-delay units through a 808. Later, samplers such as the E-mu SP-1200 allowed not only more memory but more flexibility for creative production. This allowed the filtration and layering different hits, and with a possibility of re-sequencing them into a single piece.

With the emergence of a new generation of samplers such as the AKAI S900 in the late 1980s, producers did not require the aid of tape loops. Public Enemy's first album was created with the help of large tape loops. The process of looping break into a breakbeat now became more common with a sampler, now doing the job which so far had been done manually by the DJ. In 1989, DJ Mark James under the moniker "45 King", released "The 900 Number", a breakbeat track created by synchronizing samplers and vinyl.

The lyrical content of hip hop evolved as well. The early styles presented in the 1970s soon were replaced with metaphorical lyrics over more complex, multi-layered instrumentals. Artists such as Melle Mel, Rakim, Chuck D, KRS-One and Warp 9 revolutionized hip hop by transforming it into a more mature art form, with sophisticated arrangements, often featuring "gorgeous textures and multiple layers". The influential single "The Message" (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is widely considered to be the pioneering force for conscious rap.

During the early 1980s, electro music was fused with elements of the hip hop movement, largely led by artists such as Cybotron, Hashim, Planet Patrol, Warp 9 and Newcleus. Some rappers eventually became mainstream pop performers. Kurtis Blow's appearance in a Sprite commercial marked the first hip hop musician to represent a major product. The 1981 songs "Rapture" by Blondie and "Christmas Wrapping" by the new-wave band The Waitresses were among the first pop songs to utilize rap in the delivery. In 1982 Afrika Bambaataa, introduced hip hop to an international audience with "Planet Rock."

Prior to the 1980s, hip hop music was largely confined within the context of the United States. However, during the 1980s, it began its spread and became a part of the music scene in dozens of countries. Greg Wilson was the first DJ to introduce electro hip hop to UK club audiences in the early 1980s, opting for the dub or instrumental versions of Nunk by Warp 9, Extra T’s "ET Boogie," Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop) by Man Parrish, Planet Rock and Dirty Talk (Klein + M.B.O. song).

In the early part of the decade, B-boying became the first aspect of hip hop culture to reach Japan, Australia and South Africa, where the crew Black Noise established the practice before beginning to rap later in the decade. Musician and presenter Sidney became France's first African TV presenter with his show H.I.P. H.O.P. which screened on TF1 during 1984, a first for the genre worldwide. Radio Nova helped launch other French stars including Dee Nasty whose 1984 album Paname City Rappin' along with compilations Rapattitude 1 and 2 contributed to a general awareness of Hip Hop in France.

 

Hip hop has always kept a very close relationship with the Latino community in New York. DJ Disco Wiz and the Rock Steady Crew were among early innovators from Puerto Rico, combining English and Spanish in the lyrics. The Mean Machine recorded their first song under the label "Disco Dreams" in 1981, while Kid Frost from Los Angeles began his career in 1982.

Cypress Hill was formed in 1988 in the suburb of South Gate outside Los Angeles when Senen Reyes (born in Havana) and his younger brother Ulpiano Sergio (Mellow Man Ace) moved from Cuba to South Gate with his family in 1971. They teamed up with DVX from Queens (New York), Lawrence Muggerud (DJ Muggs) and Louis Freese (B-Real), a Mexican/Cuban-American native of Los Angeles. After the departure of "Ace" to begin his solo career the group adopted the name of Cypress Hill named after a street running through a neighborhood nearby in South Los Angeles.

Japanese hip hop is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop generally tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, taking from the era's catchy beats, dance culture, and overall fun and carefree nature and incorporating it into their music. As a result, hip hop stands as one of the most commercially viable mainstream music genres in Japan, and the line between it and pop music is frequently blurred.

The new school of hip hop was the second wave of hip hop music, originating in 1983–84 with the early records of Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J. As with the hip hop preceding it (which subsequently became known as old school hip hop), the new school came predominately from New York City. The new school was initially characterized in form by drum machine-led minimalism, with influences from rock music, a hip hop "metal music for the 80's-a hard-edge ugly/beauty trance as desperate and stimulating as New York itself." It was notable for taunts and boasts about rapping, and socio-political commentary, both delivered in an aggressive, self-assertive style. In image as in song its artists projected a tough, cool, street b-boy attitude. These elements contrasted sharply with the funk and disco influenced outfits, novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers and party rhymes of artists prevalent prior to 1984 (although this characterization does not include all, or most artists prior to 1984). New school artists made shorter songs that could more easily gain radio play, and more cohesive LPs than their old school counterparts. By 1986 their releases began to establish the hip hop album as a fixture of the mainstream. Hip hop music became commercially successful, as exemplified by the Beastie Boys' 1986 album Licensed to Ill, which was the first rap album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts.

Hip hop's "golden age" (or "golden era") is a name given to a period in mainstream hip hop—usually cited as between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s—said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence. There were strong themes of Afrocentrism and political militancy, while the music was experimental and the sampling, eclectic. There was often a strong jazz influence. The artists most often associated with the phrase are Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, Big Daddy Kane and the Jungle Brothers.

The golden age is noted for its innovation – a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre" according to Rolling Stone. Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age", Spin’s editor-in-chief Sia Michel says, "there were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time", and MTV’s Sway Calloway adds:

"The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived. Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new".

Writer William Jelani Cobb says "what made the era they inaugurated worthy of the term golden was the sheer number of stylistic innovations that came into existence... in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time".

The specific time period that the golden age covers varies little from different sources. MSNBC states, "the “Golden Age” of hip-hop music: The ’80s".

Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop that reflects the violent lifestyles of inner-city African American youths. Gangsta is a non-rhotic pronunciation of the word gangster. The genre was pioneered in the mid-1980s by rappers such as Schoolly D and Ice-T, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A. Ice-T released "6 in the Mornin'", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song, in 1986. After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop.

N.W.A is the group most frequently associated with the founding of gangsta rap. Their lyrics were more violent, openly confrontational, and shocking than those of established rap acts, featuring incessant profanity and, controversially, use of the word "nigger". These lyrics were placed over rough, rock guitar-driven beats, contributing to the music's hard-edged feel. The first blockbuster gangsta rap album was N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton would establish West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and establish Los Angeles as a legitimate rival to hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "Fuck tha Police" earned a letter from FBI Assistant Director, Milt Ahlerich, strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song. Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A, gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon, despite the contributions of East Coast acts like Boogie Down Productions in shaping the genre.

The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both left wing and right wing commentators, and religious leaders. Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by saying that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, behaving in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.

“Rap is the rock 'n' roll of the day. Rock 'n' roll was about attitude, rebellion, a big beat, sex and, sometimes, social comment. If that's what you're looking for now, you're going to find it here.”

— Bill Adler, Time, 1990

In 1990, Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet was a significant success with music critics and consumers. It was highly contributory to hip hop's mainstream emergence in 1990, dubbed by Billboard editor Paul Grein as "the year that rap exploded". In a 1990 article on its commercial breakthrough, Janice C. Thompson of Time wrote that hip hop "has grown into the most exciting development in American pop music in more than a decade." Thompson noted the impact of Public Enemy's 1989 single "Fight the Power", rapper Tone Lōc's single Wild Thing being the best-selling single of 1989, and that at the time of her article, nearly a third of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were hip hop songs. In a similar 1990 article, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times put hip hop music's commercial emergence into perspective:

“It was 10 years ago that the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" became the first rap single to enter the national Top 20. Who ever figured then that the music would even be around in 1990, much less produce attractions that would command as much pop attention as Public Enemy and N.W.A? "Rapper's Delight" was a novelty record that was considered by much of the pop community simply as a lightweight offshoot of disco—and that image stuck for years. Occasional records—including Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" in 1982 and Run-DMC's "It's Like That" in 1984—won critical approval, but rap, mostly, was dismissed as a passing fancy—too repetitious, too one dimensional. Yet rap didn't go away, and an explosion of energy and imagination in the late '80s leaves rap today as arguably the most vital new street-oriented sound in pop since the birth of rock in the '50s.”

However, hip hop was still met with resistance from African American radio, including urban contemporary, of which Russell Simmons said in 1990, "Black radio hated rap from the start and there's still a lot of resistance to it".

MC Hammer hit mainstream success with the multi platinum album Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. The record reached #1 and the first single, "U Can't Touch This" charted on the top ten of the billboard hot 100. MC Hammer became one of the most successful rappers of the early nineties and one of the first household names in the genre. The album raised rap music to a new level of popularity. It was the first hip-hop album certified diamond by the RIAA for sales of over Ten Million. It remains one of the genre's all-time best-selling albums. To date, the album has sold as many as 18 Million units. In 1992, Dr. Dre released The Chronic. As well as helping to establish West Coast gangsta rap as more commercially viable than East Coast hip hop, this album founded a style called G Funk, which soon came to dominate West Coast hip hop. The style was further developed and popularized by Snoop Dogg's 1993 album Doggystyle.

Hip hop became a best selling music genre in the mid-1990s and the top selling music genre by 1999 with 81 Million CDs sold. By the late 1990s hip hop was artistically dominated by the Wu-Tang Clan. The Beastie Boys continued their success throughout the decade crossing color lines and gaining respect from many different artists.

Record labels based out of Atlanta, St. Louis, and New Orleans gained fame for their local scenes. The midwest rap scene was also notable, with the fast vocal styles from artists such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Tech N9ne, and Twista. By the end of the decade, hip hop was an integral part of popular music, and many American pop songs had hip hop components.

In Haiti, hip hop was developed in the early 1980s, and is mostly accredited to Master Dji and his songs "Vakans" and "Politik Pa m". What later became known as "Rap Kreyòl" grew in popularity in the late 1990s with King Posse and Original Rap Stuff. Due to cheaper recording technology and flows of equipment to Haiti, more Rap Kreyòl groups are recording songs, even after the January 12th earthquake.

In the Dominican Republic, a recording by Santi Y Sus Duendes and Lisa M became the first single of merenrap, a fusion of hip hop and merengue.

New York City experienced a heavy Jamaican hip hop influence during the 1990s. This influence was brought on by cultural shifts particularly because of the heightened immigration of Jamaicans to New York City and the American-born Jamaican youth who were coming of age during the 1990s.

In Europe, Africa, and Asia, hip hop began to move from the underground to mainstream audiences. In Europe, hip hop was the domain of both ethnic nationals and immigrants. British hip hop, for example, became a genre of its own and spawned artists such as Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, The Streets and many more. Germany produced the well-known Die Fantastischen Vier as well as several Turkish performers like the controversial Cartel, Kool Sava?, and Azad. Similarly, France has produced a number of native-born stars, such as IAM and Suprême NTM, MC Solaar, Rohff, Rim'K or Booba. In the Netherlands, important nineties rappers include The Osdorp Posse, a crew from Amsterdam, Extince, from Oosterhout, and Postmen. Italy found its own rappers, including Jovanotti and Articolo 31, grow nationally renowned, while the Polish scene began in earnest early in the decade with the rise of PM Cool Lee. In Romania, B.U.G. Mafia came out of Bucharest's Pantelimon neighborhood, and their brand of gangsta rap underlines the parallels between life in Romania's Communist-era apartment blocks and in the housing projects of America's ghettos. Israel's hip hop grew greatly in popularity at the end of the decade, with several stars both Palestinian (Tamer Nafar) and Israeli (Subliminal). In Portugal hip hop has his own kind of rapping, which is more political and underground scene, they are known for Valete, Dealema and Halloween. Russian hip hop emerged during last years of Soviet Union and cemented later, with groups like Malchishnik and Bad Balance enjoying mainstream popularity in the 1990s, while Ligalize and Kasta were popular in the 2000s.

In Asia, mainstream stars rose to prominence in the Philippines, led by Francis Magalona, Rap Asia, MC Lara and Lady Diane. In Japan, where underground rappers had previously found a limited audience, and popular teen idols brought a style called J-rap to the top of the charts in the middle of the 1990s.

Latinos had played an integral role in the early development of hip hop, and the style had spread to parts of Latin America, such as Cuba, early in its history. Later in the decade, with Latin rap groups like Cypress Hill on the American charts, Mexican rap rock groups, such as Control Machete, rose to prominence in their native land. An annual Cuban hip hop concert held at Alamar in Havana helped popularize Cuban hip hop, beginning in 1995. Hip hop grew steadily more popular in Cuba, because of official governmental support for musicians.

Brazilian hip hop is heavily associated with racial and economic issues in the country, where a lot of African Brazillian people live in a bad situation in the violent slums, known in Brazil as favelas. S?o Paulo is where hip hop began in the country, but it soon spread all over Brazil, and today, almost every big Brazilian city, such as Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife and Brasilia, has a hip hop scene. Some notable artists include: Racionais MC's, Thaide, and Marcelo D2

Bosnian and Herzegovinan hip hop is currently dominated by Edo Maajka, the most popular rapper of the Balkans. In that region, especially Bosnia, hip hop is still used as a political and social message in song themes such as war, profiteering, corruption,etc... Frenkie another Bosnian rapper, who is associated and the closest worker with Edo Maajka, has collaborated beyond Bosnians boarders. Frenkie collaborated with German artists such as Flip Star, Cika Reks and others. Frenkie also collaborated on his latest album, Protuotrov, with Masta Ace, the song is Zivili (lived).

After N.W.A broke up, Dr. Dre (a former member) released The Chronic in 1992, which peaked at #1 on the R&B/hip hop chart, #3 on the pop chart and spawned a #2 pop single with "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang." The Chronic took West Coast rap in a new direction, influenced strongly by P funk artists, melding smooth and easy funk beats with slowly drawled lyrics. This came to be known as G-funk and dominated mainstream hip hop for several years through a roster of artists on Death Row Records, including Tupac Shakur, whose double disc album All Eyez on Me was a big hit with hit songs "Ambitionz az a Ridah" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted", and Snoop Dogg, whose Doggystyle included the songs "What's My Name?" and "Gin and Juice", both top ten hits. As the Los Angeles-based label Death Row Records built an empire around Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and the charismatic, complicated rapper-actor Tupac Shakur. It also entered into a rivalry with New York City’s Bad Boy Records. (See the article on the East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry.)

Detached from this scene were other artists such as Freestyle Fellowship, The Pharcyde as well as more underground artists such as the Solesides collective (DJ Shadow and Blackalicious amongst others) Jurassic 5, Ugly Duckling, People Under the Stairs, Tha Alkaholiks, and earlier Souls of Mischief represented a return to hip hop roots of sampling and well planned rhyme schemes.

In the early 1990s East Coast hip hop was dominated by the Native Tongues posse which was loosely composed of De La Soul with producer Prince Paul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers, as well as their loose affiliates 3rd Bass, Main Source, and the less successful Black Sheep & KMD. Although originally a "daisy age" conception stressing the positive aspects of life, darker material (such as De La Soul's thought-provoking "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa") soon crept in.

Artists such as Masta Ace (particularly for SlaughtaHouse) & Brand Nubian, Public Enemy, Organized Konfusion, Ignacio Bernal, had a more overtly militant pose, both in sound and manner.

In the early-1990s, the Wu-Tang Clan revitalized the New York hip hop scene by pioneering an East coast hardcore rap equivalent to what was being produced on the West Coast. According to Allmusic, the production on two Mobb Deep albums, The Infamous and Hell on Earth (1996), are "indebted" to RZA's early production with Wu-Tang Clan. The success of artists such as Nas and Notorious B.I.G. during 1994–95 cemented the status of the East Coast during a time of West Coast dominance.

The productions of RZA, particularly for Wu-Tang Clan, became influential with artists such as Mobb Deep due to the combination of somewhat detached instrumental loops, highly compressed and processed drums and gangsta lyrical content. Wu-Tang solo albums such as Raekwon the Chef's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Ghostface Killah's Ironman, and GZA's Liquid Swords are now viewed as classics along with Wu-Tang "core" material. The clan's base extended into further groups called Wu-affiliates.

Producers such as DJ Premier (primarily for Gangstarr but also for other affiliated artists such as Jeru the Damaja), Pete Rock (With CL Smooth and supplying beats for many others), Buckwild, Large Professor, Diamond D and The 45 King supplying beats for numerous MCs regardless of location.

Albums such as Nas's Illmatic, Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt and O.C.'s Word...Life are made up of beats from this pool of producers.

The rivalry between the East Coast and the West Coast rappers eventually turned personal.

Later in the decade the business acumen of the Bad Boy Records tested itself against Jay-Z and his Roc-A-Fella Records and, on the West Coast, Death Row Records. The mid to late 1990s saw a generation of rappers such as the members of D.I.T.C. such as the late Big L and Big Pun.

On the East Coast, although the "big business" end of the market dominated matters commercially the late 1990s to early 2000s saw a number of relatively successful East Coast indie labels such as Rawkus Records (with whom Mos Def and Talib Kweli gained great success) and later Def Jux; the history of the two labels is intertwined, the latter having been started by EL-P of Company Flow in reaction to the former, and offered an outlet for more underground artists such as Mike Ladd, Aesop Rock, Mr Lif, RJD2, Cage and Cannibal Ox. Other acts such as the Hispanic Arsonists and slam poet turned MC Saul Williams met with differing degrees of success.

In the 1990s, hip hop began to diversify with other regional styles emerging on the national scene. Southern rap became popular in the early 1990s. The first Southern rappers to gain national attention were the Geto Boys out of Houston, Texas. Southern rap's roots can be traced to the success of Geto Boy's Grip It! On That Other Level in 1989, the Rick Rubin produced The Geto Boys in 1990, and We Can't Be Stopped in 1991. The Houston area also produced other artists that pioneered the early southern rap sound such as UGK and the solo career of Scarface.

Atlanta hip hop artists were key in further expanding rap music and bringing southern hip hop into the mainstream. Releases such as Arrested Development's 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... in 1992, Goodie Mob's Soul Food in 1995 and OutKast's ATLiens in 1996 were all critically acclaimed. Later, Master P (Ghetto D) built up a roster of artists (the No Limit posse) based out of New Orleans. Master P incorporated G funk and Miami bass influences; and distinctive regional sounds from St. Louis, Chicago, Washington D.C., Detroit and others began to gain popularity.

In the 1990s, elements of hip hop continued to be assimilated into other genres of popular music. Neo soul, for example, combined hip hop and soul music. In the 1980s and 1990s, rap rock, rapcore and rap metal, fusions of hip hop and rock, hardcore punk and heavy metal became popular among mainstream audiences. Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit were among the most well-known bands in these fields.

Digable Planets' 1993 release Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) was an influential jazz rap record sampling the likes of Don Cherry, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Herbie Mann, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. It spawned the hit single "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" which reached #16 on the Billboard Hot 100

Though Caucasian American rappers like the Beastie Boys, House of Pain and 3rd Bass had had some popular success or critical acceptance from the hip hop community, Eminem's success, beginning in 1999 with the platinum The Slim Shady LP, surprised many.

The popularity of hip hop music continued through the 2000s. Dr. Dre remained an important figure, and in the year 2000 produced, The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem. Dre also produced 50 Cent's, 2003 album Get Rich or Die Tryin' which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts.

Hip hop influences also found their way increasingly into mainstream pop during this period mainly the mid-2000s, as the Los Angeles style of the 1990s lost power. Nelly's debut LP, Country Grammar, sold over Nine Million copies. In the 2000s, crunk music, a derivative of Southern hip hop, gained considerable popularity via the likes of Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins. Jay-Z represented the cultural triumph of hip hop. As his career progressed, he went from performing artist to label president, head of a clothing line, club owner, and market consultant—along the way breaking Elvis Presley’s record for most number one albums on the Billboard magazine charts by a solo artist.

In addition to the mainstream success, the United States also saw the success of alternative hip hop in the form of performers such as The Roots, Dilated Peoples, Gnarls Barkley and Mos Def, who achieved significant recognition. Gnarls Barkley's album St. Elsewhere, which contained a fusion of funk, neo soul and hip hop, debuted at number 20 on the Billboard 200 charts. In addition, Aesop Rock's 2007 album None Shall Pass was well received, and reached #50 on the Billboard charts.

The continuation of hip hop can also be seen in different national contexts. In Tanzania, maintained popular acts of their own in the early 2000s, infusing local styles of Afrobeat and arabesque melodies, dancehall and hip-hop beats, and Swahili lyrics. Scandinavian, especially Danish and Swedish, performers became well known outside of their country, while hip hop continued its spread into new regions, including Russia, Japan, Philippines, Canada, China, Korea, India and especially Vietnam. Of particular importance is the influence on East Asian nations, where hip hop music has become fused with local popular music to form different styles such as K-pop, C-pop and J-pop.

In Germany and France, gangsta rap has become popular among youths who like the violent and aggressive lyrics. Some German rappers openly or comically flirt with Nazism, Bushido (born Anis Mohamed Youssef Ferchichi) raps "Salutiert, steht stramm, Ich bin der Leader wie A" (Salute, stand to attention, I am the leader like 'A') and Fler had a hit with the record Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) complete with the title written in Third Reich style Gothic print and advertised with an Adolf Hitler quote. These references also spawned great controversy in Germany. Meanwhile in France, artists like Kery James' Idéal J maintained a radical, anti-authoritarian attitude and released songs like Hardcore which attacked the growth of the French far right.

In the Netherlands, MC Brainpower went from being an underground battle rapper to mainstream recognition in the Benelux, thus influencing numerous rap artists in the region. In Israel, rapper Subliminal reaches out to Israeli youth with political and religious-themed lyrics, usually with a Zionist message.

One of the countries outside the US where hip-hop is most popular is the United Kingdom. In the 2000s a derirative genre from Hip-Hop (as well as UK Garage and Drum and Bass) known as Grime became popular with artists such as Dizzee Rascal becoming successful. Although it is immensely popular, many British politicians criticize the music for what they see as promoting theft and murder, similar to gangsta rap in America. These criticisms have been deemed racist by the mostly African British grime industry. Despite its controversial nature, grime has had a major effect on British fashion and pop music, with many young working class youth emulating the clothing worn by grime stars like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley. There are many subgenres of grime, including "Rhythm and Grime," a mix of R&B and grime, and grindie, a mix of indie rock and grime popularized by indie rock band Hadouken!

Hip hop has globalized into many cultures worldwide, as evident through the emergence of numerous regional scenes. It has emerged globally as a movement based upon the main tennets of hip hop culture. The music and the art continue to embrace, even celebrate, its transnational dimensions while staying true to the local cultures to which it is rooted. Hip-hop's inspiration differs depending on each culture. Still, the one thing virtually all hip hop artists worldwide have in common is that they acknowledge their debt to those African American people in New York who launched the global movement. While hip-hop is sometimes taken for granted by Americans, it is not so elsewhere, especially in the developing world, where it has come to represent the empowerment of the disenfranchised and a slice of the American dream. American hip-hop music has reached the cultural corridors of the globe and has been absorbed and reinvented around the world.

Crunk originated in Tennessee in the 1990s. The style was pioneered and commercialized by artists from Memphis, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia.

Looped, stripped-down drum machine rhythms are usually used. The Roland TR-808 and 909 are among the most popular. The drum machines are usually accompanied by simple, repeated synthesizer melodies and heavy bass stabs. The tempo of the music is somewhat slower than hip-hop, around the speed of reggaeton.

The focal point of crunk is more often the beats and music than the lyrics therein. Crunk rappers, however, often shout and scream their lyrics, creating an aggressive, almost heavy, style of hip-hop. While other subgenres of hip-hop address sociopolitical or personal concerns, crunk is almost exclusively party music, favoring call and response hip-hop slogans in lieu of more substantive approaches.

(Continued)

Part XXXV in the next “STEPPING STONES”

 “...the truth shall set you free”

 (Email [email protected] to get “plugged in”!)

 

COMMENTARY

Coming!

 

BY

THE HEAD CORNERSTONE CORP.

(A Delaware Corporation)

Now recruiting for ALL POSITIONS.

We are looking for;

Very talented

Very serious

Career oriented

Self-motivated

Self-assured

Professional

College graduates and/or currently active students

Progressive minded

And Personable People

Whom;

Are enthusiastic

Enjoy challenges

Possess an aptitude for business

Work best under pressure

Can travel extensively (required for some positions)

Are very organized and detail oriented

And have excellent communication skills (oral and literal)

For a very fast paced,

very mature,

and very exciting environment and a very rewarding experience.

Compensation will include;

Industry competitive salaries

Four (4) weeks paid vacation

Health (medical, dental, and vision), life, disability Insurance

Aggressive training programs

401 K participation

Progressive Retirement Plans

Quota based profit sharing

Tuition reimbursement

Childcare/Elderly Care assistance

As well as many others

All interested persons, please, forward cover letters and resumes, to include salary requirements and 8 x 10 glossy, to [email protected].

Thank you.

Akil A. Bomani

President, CEO

The Head Cornerstone Corp.

(A Delaware Corporation)

 

Coming soon!!

URBAN COMMUNITY ECONOMIC RECOVERY, REDEVELOPMENT, & MANAGEMENT TRAINING PROGRAM

Complete with lectures, workshops, Power Point Presentations, resource acquisition and allocation management, progressive community activism training, progressive youth developmental programs, progressive business plan development programs, crime suppression program development, administration management, and lots of other “goodies for you…

…find your community leader and let them know to “get on board this train”.

Brought to you By

“Get Your Mind Right” Productions

A Company of

Orji

“Marketing from the roots…”

 

Please, email [email protected] for all inquiries

"Strictly business for serious business minds…"

 

It Is On!!!

Email George at [email protected] and get

“PLUGGED IN”

To the “Quote of the Week”,

Relevant and insightful commentaries of today’s “real world” issues,

Upcoming performances and releases by Stone Records’ artist(s), the latest news and events…

Join the fan list at Reverbnation.com/georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

Where you may also

PICKUP THE COMING HOT NEW SINGLE,

“I Want To Know”

As well as “To Love And Be Loved”, “Let’s Take Our Time”, “A Friend In You”, “Believe in You” as well as several others on the release of the long anticipated debut album,

“Volume I George”

By the soulfully sultry and smooth balladeer,

George

2016!!

“The Memphis Step”

the debut single from the album,

“Summertime”

Also, “Summertime”, “Early Morning”, “Love In Thunder”, “Monday Hustle”, and others

by Stone Records acid/contemporary jazz group,

Ade

plus several contemporary soul gospel, hip hop, and urban projects beginning in 2016!! Stone Records is “…music for the soul” and we have come to get it on, baby!!

 

Join the email lists:

Facebook.com/George the balladeer

Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner

 

“For we have come to get it on, baby…”